1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to managing resources in an autonomous vehicle system and, more particularly, to a system and method for managing access to a resource, such as a wheel loader, by a plurality of autonomous vehicles, such as autonomous dump trucks.
2. Related Art
Caterpillar Inc. of Peoria, Ill., manufactures off-road mining vehicles. For example, the Caterpillar 777C is an off-road mining truck. Commonly owned, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/019,540, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,390,125 filed Feb. 18, 1993, "Vehicle Position Determination System and Method," the full text of which is incorporated herein by reference, discloses an autonomous vehicle system for use with a mining vehicle such as the 777C truck. Such an autonomous vehicle system may be used, for example, to implement an autonomous mining operation. For example, a plurality of autonomous dump trucks can haul rock from an excavation site to a crusher site in an open pit mining operation.
In such a mining system, the excavation site and the crusher represent limited resources which must be shared between the plurality of dump trucks. It is desired to manage the trucks and the resources so that operation of the autonomous mining system is optimized.